I’ve made this recipe a lot over the years. A couple of things I have learned:

1. Boil the bagels for a shorter period of time. The longer a bagel boils, the tougher the skin will be when you bake them. She says 1.5-2 minutes per side, but I have found that this produces bagels that are very crusty and hard to bite into. My suggestion would be to boil less than a minute per side.

2. I have started shaping my bagels after the first rise and then put them on a baking sheet to go in the fridge over night. This saves some time in the a.m. (which is when I want a bagel, but I am not a morning person) and makes for a slightly fluffier bagel.

3. After boiling, I put the bagels on a sheet of parchment on a pan. This keeps the egg white from sticking onto the pan and saves cleaning up later.

My hubby loves these bagels and it’s his bday this weekend, so I think I willl be making them on Sat.

The shorter boiling time definitely makes a different – I did half of mine at 90 seconds per side and the second half at 60 seconds per side (after they released from the bottom of the pan) and was far happier with the shorter boil version.

I’ve just put the dough up to rise. I feel like I should have thrown in some whole wheat flour. White bread/White bagels are so….so….foreign….and not what we normally eat. I guess I’ll just call it a special occassion

Using high-gluten flour will give your bagels more of a chew. If you can’t find it in your supermarket (Wegman’s has it, but I’ve never found it anywhere else), use vital wheat gluten. It’s a powder you can add to regular flour. I use 1 teaspoon per cup of flour. If you are using some whole wheat in your recipe, use 1.5 teaspoons per cup of flour.

Most all-purpose flour in the US has a protein content of 10.5% to 11.7% The bread flour from King Arthur that I use has 12.7%, according to the package. KA’s website sells high gluten flour that’s 14%(!) I’m guessing that adding vital wheat gluten to bread flour may get it up to about that percentage.

I’ve seen some recipes with oil, others with no fat at all…
I may use butter as shortening is “forbidden” in my kitchen, too :-)
PS. I’m so behind with my baking.
I’ve just made tons of sourdough coconut, cranberry & chocolate rolls / bread and had to leave all the rest for later.
Hope the bagels aren’t too complicated.
See you on Tuesday.

I inadvertantly left it out – found it while cleaning up. I made everything bagels and cheese-jalapeño. The following day the everything bagel was tough, whereas the one with added cheese was moist and soft. I read in The Baker’s Apprentice that he uses no fat. His recipe suggests malt powder, malt syrup, honey, or brown sugar. I’m thinking more for flavor than anything else.

Hi, I’ve replaced some of the flour with wholewheat flour (4 cups bread flour and 2 cups ww flour). The dough is in the fridge as I did not have the time to finish them today…Hope they’ll turn out fine.

Teressa, I just made mine half whole-wheat and half AP and they turned out fine. If you’re more daring you could experiment with a different ratio, but I found that the half-half mix and good flavor without being overly dense.

Just mixed up my dough and got it set up for the first rise – I thought it was really easy in the stand mixer. I brought it to work to use the big Professional 600 here but I think my Artisan 5qt could have handled it. It wasn’t firm like the white loaves – it was very elastic. Hope they turn out! :)